Sunday, June 5, 2011

Amazing cinemagraphs (Moving still pics)

It is, in their own words, ‘something more than a photo but less than a video’. Two artists have created a new way to to record your special moments – pictures with movement. The ‘cinemagraphs’ look like still photos but actually feature a subtle area of movement designed to grab your eye and keep you looking. The effect is slightly eerie – but utterly captivating.

n one shot of a crowded square, bodies are frozen in time, but one man quietly turns the pages of his newspaper. Another photo of a restaurant terrace is brought to life by the reflection of a taxi going past in the window.

In most cases she shoots the photos and Mr Burg adds on motion-graphics over several hours of painstaking editing. The more complex ones take an entire day to pull together. New York-based Miss Beck told The Atlantic magazine: ‘There’s something magical about a still photograph – a captured moment in time – that can simultaneously exist outside the fraction of a second the shutter captures. ‘We feel there are many exciting applications for this type of moving image. ‘There’s movement in everything and by capturing that plus the great things about a still photograph you get to experience what a video has to offer without the time commitment a video requires.’